SHONA RELIGION. Bantu-speaking peoples first moved into the central area between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers (what is now Zimbabwe) some two millennia ago. Over the centuries, small polities formed and combined into a number of complex states, which in turn divided in the face of internal and external pressures. The term Shona is relatively new and is applied to the indigenous inhabitants of this region, excluding only the small ethnic groups at the northern and southern peripheries and the nineteenth-century Nguni invaders from the south, namely, the Ndebele, who now occupy southwest Zimbabwe, and the Shangane in the southeast. The Shona peoples are often classified according to four main dialect groups: the Zezuru in the center, the Korekore to the north, the Manyika to the east, and the Karanga to the south. The Shona are the dominant ethnic group in contemporary Zimbabwe, comprising about eight...